Once again we're reminded that TechCrunch is not journalism, just a
rumour and speculation blog unwilling to do the work required to get
stories right.

Around 1am July 7 TechCrunch posted
What
the Hell Happened to the Free Version of Google Apps. The first
sentence asserted "The free version of Google Apps is history.". And
later, "they just killed the Standard product entirely." The sourcing
was Arrington's own observation that the link to the free option was
gone from the web page. And the post said "We're emailing Google for comment." (Note the present tense; did he email just when the post was published, in the middle of the night?)

The story turns out not to be true. An update appeared on TechCrunch
several hours later from Google explaining "In experimenting with a
number of different landing page layouts, the link to Standard Edition
was inadvertently dropped from one of the variations". And there the
link is, back again on the
front page. In other words, TechCrunch rushed to publish a story
before bothering to check any facts. Not doing any investigation, not
giving the subject a chance for comment. Just speculating on the basis
of one observation. It's nice for TechCrunch to at least update the
story with some actual facts after publication (including a snarky
retraction) but the damage has already been done.

For a second and much uglier example of TechCrunch's journalistic practice, there's the story of whether last.fm colluded with the RIAA to expose its users to prosecution. TechCrunch said they did, last.fm strongly denied it, then TechCrunch came back with a followup three months later. This second post from TechCrunch isn't bad, it has actual sourcing (albeit anonymous) and a bunch of detail. Only last.fm and
CBS both denied it again. And TechCrunch is so compromised there's no way to know what to believe. The story is completely tainted. (The Guardian did a great opinion piece about this debacle.)

Why do I care? Because I care about journalism and I care about truth.
And because TechCrunch is influential and is taking over the role that
tech journalists used to fill. And the process they follow doesn't
safeguard the truth. The
Google Apps and Google
PC false stories just cause confusion. The last.fm story did real
harm to their business. Journalistic practice comes out of decades of
experience in acting ethically and working to get the story right. It
kills me to see an important blog throw all that out.

Update: Arrington responded
to my criticism in Techcrunch comments. He's now asserting
"It was a removal of
the links to see how conversions to paid went." He also told me to "Go
kick a cat or something. You'll feel better afterwards." Guess he's
having a bad day.